Good morning 🐣

Every self-respecting villain needs a classy headquarters.

Elisa Colette decided to “take stock of some memorable cinema locations for movie villains with a weakness for Modernist design,” recognizable places like the Chemosphere and Ennis houses in Los Angeles and the Boulder Reign in Arizona.

And if you have any aspiring villains in your own life that are looking to conquer the world, be sure to get them the book “Lair: Radical Homes and Hideouts of Movie Villains” (buy it here):

Edited by acclaimed architect Chad Oppenheim with Andrea Gollin, Lair includes interviews with production designers and other industry professionals such as Ralph Eggleston, Richard Donner, Roger Christian, David Scheunemann, Gregg Henry, and Mark Digby. Contributors include director Michael Mann, cultural critic Christopher Frayling, museum director Joseph Rosa, and architect Amy Murphy. Architectural illustrations and renderings by Carlos Fueyo provide multiple in-depth views of these spaces.

Lastly, it sounds like life’s imitating art because someone’s actually trying to build a movie studio in space.

Now watch this 👀

Last week I vowed not to write about too many new releases, so I decided to research some movie anniversaries for ideas. Going back 60 years, I dug up this little-known curiosity called “Dr. No” (available on demand).

You may not have heard of it. It’s a reboot of an episode from the 1954 anthology TV show “Climax!” titled “Casino Royale,” which in turn was an adaptation of some pulpy novel you’d buy in the airport. They had tried introducing the main character into pop culture, but it didn’t seem to go anywhere because the episode wasn’t even rediscovered until almost three decades later. They gave it eight years after airing for everyone to forget about it and tried again in 1962 with this full length movie.

So “Dr. No” is about this British spy named James Bond (played by Sean Connery) trying to prevent some secret society from causing World War III or something. It has to do with rocket toppling, which I guess is a real thing? I’m just surprised because everything else in this movie would lead me to believe it was some sex joke that went over my head.

The movie kinda feels like it thinks it’s cooler than it really is. Don’t get me wrong; there are some really cool aspects to it:

• a fun gambling scene in a London club where Eunice Gayson introduces her character as “Trench, Sylvia Trench,” to which our hero responds “Bond, James Bond” (really seems like it could have become iconic and highly quotable);
• other lines like: “That’s a Smith and Wesson… and you’ve had your six;”
• that classic spy stuff that just never gets old for me, e.g., sticking a strand of hair to a closet door or pouring powder on a briefcase to later check if it’s been opened or tampered with while you were gone.

But there’s just something awkward about it all. I should have known from the opening credits, when I thought “man, that theme song is killer,” but then it awkwardly transitions to two other unrelated pieces.

You can tell things from the book were cut to reduce the running time, but they only cut the explanations for things, so you’ll inexplicably see James get shocked and burned while trying to escape through a ventilation duct, or he’ll come across Ms. Honey Ryder (played by Ursula Andress, dubbed for some reason by Nikki van der Zyl AND Diana Coupland) tied to the ground and slowly drowning. It’s kind of cool in a deconstructionist way; rather than having everything set up, we’re just going to randomly stumble upon all these elaborate scenarios with no explanation or aftermath.

The most egregious example in my opinion is when (SPOILER) we finally meet the titular evil mastermind, Dr. No, towards the end of the movie and then he’s killed just as suddenly without much fanfare. We barely even get to appreciate his metallic or robotic hands or whatever they are, don’t worry about it.

But you can definitely see where the producers thought Sean Connery was going to become a star. Too bad because he really had that It Factor. The way he looks at you! If there’s a world where women just throw themselves at a complete stranger as if they have no autonomy or character, I can see Ol’ Jim Bond being the guy.

It’s a shame this didn’t seem to break through to the masses. It’s goofy fun. They were really onto something here, save for some poorly thought out filmmaking choices. But it looks like they scratched together enough to make a sequel. I’ll do some more digging and report back.

Until next time! 👋

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